Remember the sacred texts:
You all are making me work too hard, so I’m locking this dumpster fire and drinking my coffee.
Oh so baity!
You can remove “western democracy” there I guess.
Also nah, I can speak out against my boss, my eventual landlord and protest in the streets, because I live in France, a western democracy.
YMMW.
The French are smart enough to burn cars and loot when their government tries to pull some bullshit. I wish Germans were that smart.
And yet most of the political forces in France are advocating to remove all these rights. Sindicalists are arrested under terrorist laws, as are eco-activists. And maires trying to enforce price ceiling for lawns in cities are considered like Staline.
Sure and that is bad.
What does it have to do with the discussion though? Or is it “west bad” whatever happens?
So as long as the litteral nazis are not in charge genociding people it’s fine and there’s nothing to worry about? Syndicalistes and ecoactivists being arrested for terrorism is fine already?
So “west bad” it is then.
I mean if the above things are what defines the west then yeah. But I don’t think they do, or at least they don’t have to - I believe we stand for better things than that - for liberty, for democracy and welfare of all and I believe in progress, not complacency and decay thinly veiled by whataboutism.
EDIT: The user above clearly manipulated vote counts. All his comments get an extra 8-12 upvotes, everything that disagrees with him has an extra 8-12 downvotes. Blocked and reported.
eventual landlord
So you’re a child? Lol good luck speaking out against a landlord, don’t you know it’s like a job interview nowadays with references from past landlords and all?
lol ever heard of renter’s rights? it’s incredibly fucking difficult to kick out a renter here in sweden, they have to repeatedly be a massive nuisance to everyone around.
In Sweden yes, maybe, idk, not Swedish. In Europe no, we have heard of renters’ rights, but as a renter I can tell you we have practically none.
I own my appartement but I have rented over 20 different ones before that.
No need to namecall just because you don’t understand 😊
Oh ok so you haven’t rented in the current market. So actually it’s you who doesn’t understand eh?
Idk what you meant in that case by “eventual landlord”, maybe try actually making sense first and then maybe you won’t get name-called as much. 😊
From what I can tell, France still has essentially no-fault evictions and nowhere near sufficient renter protections, while there is a housing crisis going on. It’s not anywhere near as bad as the UK, but given the regulations as I can see them, I wouldn’t risk speaking out against the landlord in any capacity there either. This doesn’t even touch the fact that France is also fairly centralised, in that job opportunities are richer closer to the city and the bigger the city, and Paris is even worse for living expenses overall than London.
That is totally right. I’m french. Laws protect renters, but not that much, and landlords don’t hesitate to threaten with false pretense. And if you mention anything illegal they’re doing, you simply won’t have the apartment. They ask documents they have no right to see, but if you don’t provide them they won’t even look at your application. Obviously people of colour do have a harder time finding an apartment, but even for engineers it’s hard to find one in a city.
That is completely dependent on country and who you try to rent from. In Norway the most I ever had to do is consent to an automatic check to prove I don’t have any reports of not paying bills.
In France you need to earn 3 times the price of the lawn, and you need warrants (garants) : people who will be forced to pay if you ever don’t. To prove you can pay, you need 3 months of salary sheets. You need to prove your job is not a CDD (short determined time). You need to show insurances and prove your identity too of course. Half of those are not legal, but landlords don’t care because you’re in competition : you visit the apartment with a dozen of other people who want a place to sleep too. And the landlord will choose the chosen one as he pleases.
It depends on the place, but Lyon is absolute madness to find an apartment.
You ever rent from a private landlord, instead of letting agency?
I’m Finnish, and what you say has been true for me — aside from when my credit got fucked (due to some semiauthoritarian bullshit), when I had to rent from a private landlord.
That was more or less exactly how the earlier commenter describes it; an interview. Luckily I was just over 20 and out of the army as an NCO, so the old couple were really into that and gave me the apartment.
I also used to believe our cops weren’t that bad. Until I was detained and saw how they act behind closed doors.
I bet OP hasn’t actually done any of the things they listed. Reads like an edgy teenager.
For the first 2 points: Don’t use “Western democracies”. This is a US problem. Canada has much stronger labour and home protections.
3rd point: Getting banned online is a “you” problem. Your government has nothing to do with why your shitty opinions get you banned or muted. The fact that you even have the ability to complain about your government online is a luxury many other governments don’t afford to their people.
4th point: Whining about cereal variety makes the entire argument hold less water. Who the fuck cares about brands of cereal. Buy your cereal or don’t, but shut the fuck up about it. This is an empty complaint about capitalism.
5th point: Fair enough.
I don’t directly mean you, OP. Unless you made the meme… In which case I do mean directly you.
I think cereal is brought in to demonstrate the absurdity of the situation, where something so basic as worker’s or renter’s rights are non-existent but somehow energy already has went into something so stupid as cereal, which indeed nobody cares about.
First point is definetly a problem in other western democracies. In Sweden there is the “loyalty obligation”, which states that you have to – according to one of the centrist unions here – “put the interest of the company above your own”. It is a strong intrusion in your freedom of speech.
Which of the unions is that? Just so I know which one to avoid.
“Unionen”. I think they focus a lot on like engineers and bosses, and other upper middle class jobs.
I don’t think the union is really to blame there, “loyalty obligation”, lojalitetsplikt, is afaik a set of laws that really does what Unionen says about it. It’s not the union implementing it.
To be frank, I think its quite a refreshingly honest phrasing they are using. A more company-friendly way would be like “we all like to be teamplayers, and that is what the loyalty obligation is all about”, or something like that. Now it sounds like “you are the guy on the track in the trolly problem meme, get fucked”, and to some degree, fair play to you.
From what I could read during my morning fugue state, it seems to me that they’re warning you that the contract you signed when getting hired does not allow you to be disloyal to the company as long as you’re working for it. I could not find anything about it being an actual law, though I’ve been wrong before so it wouldn’t surprise me if I missed something.
Som anställd har du lojalitetsplikt gentemot arbetsgivaren – även under en uppsägningstid. Se upp så att du inte bryter mot LAS eller lagen om företagshemligheter.
Om du då är illojal, kan det betyda att du bryter mot LAS ( Lagen om anställningsskydd)
So it is a colloquial term for those aspects of LAS and lagen om företagshemligheter. Those quotes from Unionen again. There seems to be aspects (the application of this after your employment ends) also regulated in the collective bargening agreements, and those are not laws, that is true.
They complain about cereals because they’ve been fed so much CCP and USSR Propoganda that they think food variety is a bad thing. They’re not one of us.
The point is, all the different brands you see are owned by the same handful of megacorporations So you’re not getting actual choice, just the illusion of choice. You’re like a dog who gets excited when your owner feeds you dog food from his hand instead of the bowl, because you think it’s a treat.
I thought the meme was clear about that, but the average American reads at a third grade level, so I understand reading comprehension can be difficult for you.
Pretty shitty thing to say, but anyway…
Just because a few big corporations make cereal, doesn’t mean you have an “illusion of choice”. It’s kind of how the system works. A company that makes 1 brand of cereal also makes dozens of hundreds more. They are using processes and equipment already in place to make a slight variation on existing products. It’s kind of just how things work. Same with companies like Asus making dozens of hundreds of variations of monitors. I don’t think that’s illusion of choice. That’s actual choices, with actual differences.
Anecdotally, where I live, large corporations stock the grocery shelves with all their cereals, but local companies do make it in as well. I think in my situation, I do have access to items produced locally.
If you want to make an argument that some dickhead company like Mondelez owns fucking everything, I’m right with you, but whining about cereal variety makes the argument really weak.
Imagine being unironically anti-democracy and also claiming to be a socialist.
Anarchist types prefer consensus-based decision making processes to democracy. We want the entire community to agree on a course of action, not just let 51% order 49% around.
The consensus of the reasonable, educated, and mentally stable? Yes. The consensus of the walmart wildlife? Ehhh…
The consensus of the walmart wildlife?
Obviously, your right to vote should be dictated by where you do your retail shopping. Maybe we should also factor in your taste in movies/music and your fashion sense.
FFS, Americans deserve another Trump presidency if people actually think like this. It sounds like what one of those MAGA maniacs would say about Tim Walz. “Don’t vote for him, he’s one of those fat old poors who shops at Walmart!”
Such blatant classism.
Do you find that the types of people who seek authority over others are reasonable, educated, and mentally stable?
Dehumanizing groups of people as “wildlife” though… That’s kinda messed up.
Anarchist types and unrealistic idealism, name a more iconic duo
Are we talking about American Democracy, where the police have carte blanche to brutalize protesters for objecting to police brutality and a SCOTUS majority can overturn a popular election?
Or Chinese Democracy where you can be in any party you want, but only the CCP gets to hold any real power? Or the Taiwanese Parliament, where politicians form gangs that attempt to beat up each other’s members?
Or Thai Democracy, where the courts are selected by the King and regularly disband majority governments for committing Lese Majesty?
Are we talking about Apartheid Israeli Democracy, where over half the population is disenfranchised for being Palestinian?
How about Iranian Democracy, where the Supreme Council gets to decide who can run for office?
Do we like the Brazilian style of Democracy, where an elected Prime Minister can be deposed by the AG and a fascist can fuck around massacring indigenous people for a Presidential term, while the former PM gets the charges dropped and has to run for his old seat?
Are we big fans of the DPRK, where a single family has dominated the federal government since the country’s founding? Or are we more inclined towards the Republic of Korea, which continues to send up the children and friends of the old 1970s Dictatorship to run the country, because 90% of the economy is controlled by six billionaire families?
Like, you can’t just say “anti-democracy”. Cuba claims to be a democracy. Argentina claims to be a democracy. The UK claims to be a democracy. Russia claims to be a democracy. What kind of democracy are we actually against?
If you want to fix things I’m all for it, but lets not pretend that the notion of “Western Democracies” being responsible for their problems has any merit whatsoever.
lets not pretend that the notion of “Western Democracies” being responsible for their problems has any merit whatsoever.
The problems tend to be anti-democratic in nature. The cozy relationship between mass media and corporate interests restricts information to the voting public. Privatization of public spaces forces candidates to raise enormous amounts of money just to secure space to host a rally or get a minute of TV coverage. And the legal means by which private party leadership can restrict access to a primary, combined with the broader public limits on who can participate in an election as an independent, help dictate the quality of candidates that voters have to choose from.
“Western Democracy” has always consisted, first and foremost, as a bunch of backroom deals and handshake arrangements. JD Vance didn’t get the VP slot under Trump because he was the second most popular Republican in the primaries. Neither Mike Johnson nor Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House because they were the nation’s most beloved Congressfolks. Nobody on the current Supreme Court cares what the electorate thinks of them. None of this is small-d democratic. And all of it contributes to the basket of problems that plague our dysfunctional domestic policy.
Primaries aren’t restrictive, its just that nobody actually votes in them. I think the highest turnout in USA history was 36.9 Million people in a primary election, chosen to represent 81 Million DNC Voters and again to represent 329.5 Million Americans total.
There is a huge problem with campaign finance laws in the USA, despite our many laws regulating it, and admittedly not having a democracy would fix that specific problem, but it sure as fuck won’t make any American’s lives better.
Primaries aren’t restrictive
Parties in the US are considered private organizations and party chairs have enormous power, as a result.
Utah Republican Accused of Trying to ‘Steal an Election’ by GOP
Currently in the courts, because this degree of infighting is cutting across a number of people with real power and influence. But for less high-profile candidates, this is absolutely something a party official can (and periodically will) do, when the party leadership doesn’t want a contested primary.
There is a huge problem with campaign finance laws in the USA, despite our many laws regulating it, and admittedly not having a democracy would fix that specific problem
I would argue that having the problem makes the system undemocratic. When you can buy your way onto a ticket and buy your competition off of it, the end voter has far less real electoral choice. And when districts bloat to the size of 600k-700k voters in the case of national House Reps and as much as 40M for Senate seats, the idea of representative democracy is stretched to its functional limit.
How does a pair California Senator seriously represent the diverse views of a state this large and varied? And not even a split pair? It isn’t as though you’re electing the 1st and 2nd place winners. You’ve got two individuals who rose to the rank largely based on how much money they could raise from friends in domestic industry. Not based on their popularity or the popularity of their policies in any meaningful sense.
(Supposedly) Defending their rights in a court of law and participating in fair elections appears as “infighting” to you, lol.
Defending their rights in a court of law
Getting stripped off the ballot by an unelected official and having to run to a court of other unelected officials to be reinstated does not sound like any kind of democracy to me.
A lot of these comments reek of boot polish…
Those fucking tankies.
Your instance, Lemmy.today, federates with Hexbear. We don’t. Not all criticism of capitalism is in the service of dictatorship.
Anarchists invented the term ‘tankie’ to describe authoritarian defenders of the USSR in our fight for survival against attack, imprisonment, and assassination by agents of the Bolshevik state. This is an anarchist meme, posted by an anarchist, on a Lemmy instance run by anarchists. You’re using the word wrong.
If you see authoritarianism whenever people criticize neoliberal government, the problem is you. Fix your brain rot.
It’s an anti-democracy and anti-western-powers meme by a “Socialist”, self identifying in the tags. This is core Tanky-ism.
You wouldn’t know a tankie if one rolled over you with tracked treads.
The core of the term ‘tankie’ comes from when the USSR sent tanks into Hungary in 1956 to institute a pro-Warsaw Pact regime change. Western governments are also big fans of sending mechanized infantry to install dictators. If you are an ideological partisan of western ‘democracy’ you have more in common with tankies than the poster does.
Oh OK Boomer, sorry for using the word Tankie to describe anybody other than a 1948 Hungarian/Bulgarian USSR sympathizer. /s
You’re doing a really bad job of concealing your fascist sympathies.
Lmao
Insulting Hexbear for actual Fascism is what Fascism is to you?
More like: I am so happy I live in america.
Everywhere else you have job protection and renters protection
Yeah totally should do that in an autocratic country, lets go with Russia and lets see how long it would take before the original poster is on their way to a Siberian gulag
Fuck borders, everyone deserves freedom, not just people on my side of a line on the map
And they can vote for a better future. Last UK election we got a labour victory but 8% fewer people voted. Thats crazy.
Of topic, i agree with that, country borders are what making people xenophobic
Hey, my house has a lot things that need repaired. I should probably bring up these issues with my family, and get to work on fixing them.
Oh, the house down the road is on fire? Guess I should be fine my house is only falling into disrepair.
Hmm, I’ve done all of these things and haven’t suffered the consequences you describe. Yes, in the US.
Sure, but have you tried any of these while being black?
In the US, maybe. But that’s considered a flawed democracy and getting worse all the time. Only 8% of the nations on earth are full democracies, a number that continues to fall because of the pessimism and stupidity promulgated by authoritarian regimes.
Germany on “full democracy” at the same time it bans symbols of Palestinian support and uses the state’s violence to contain such manifestations.
I’d like to know your sources, because to my knowledge there is no such ban in Germany.
Are you implying that this hasn’t also happened recently in the US?
Are you implying two things can’t both be wrong?
??? I am allowed to fly the Palestinian flag, attend the marches, and say the chants whenever I want. The only thing we really cannot do in America is disrupt college campuses while classes are in session and riot. The three things I listed earlier are completely banned in Germany.
It was pro-Israel protesters that rioted and pro-Palestine/anti-genocide protesters that paid the price.
Nobody’s perfect, and if you’re in Germany you should reach out to your politicians about it.
Protesting IS exactly that. Keep licking that boot.
I didn’t say not to protest.
In fact protesting is incredibly useful when the calls of many go unheard or ignored.
And having an effective protest is only possible if you can get a lot of people together, so it’s best to not shit on people from hello for saying exactly what you think is the “right” thing.
Not to mention having a large community of people reaching out before having to protest is also helpful, so doing good community building is also important.
Germany bans stuff al the time. It’s a consequence of our history and the historic leniency towards extremist edges. Your example is debatable in it’s execution, the general thought however is not.
Oh look, it’s the Country the Map Maker Likes Index Map
“Western Countries good, everyone else bad” what a farce.
Jesus fuck this map is a joke.
UK is a full democracy? That’s a fucking joke, literally all of this applies here. Including no-fault (read: spoke out against landlord or asked for repairs) evictions.
Technically, it isn’t clear if the crown could take back the rights given by them to parlaiment to govern the UK, but currently all decisions are handled by parlaiment including budget allotted to royals who are actually a net possitive from tourism.
For any Tankies in here, Tourism is a thing where people come from far away to share their resources in order to experience food and culture. China unfortunately is such an oppressive and bleak place that nobody wants to go there unless they have to or if they’re doing so accidentally by not realizing what happened to Hong Kong.
Are these tankies in the room with us right now? Fuck the CCP, but we’re talking about the west right now, stop trying to divert attention.
all decisions are handled by parlaiment
Who is backed by the undemocratic FPTP system, extremely pro-establishment press owned by capitalists waging open class war and a literal house of “lords” who have direct and legal legislative influence, not even lobbying. Imagine if Elon musk could reject legislation. Yeah, democratic af.
It’s a ruse you fell for, nothing more.
who are actually a net possitive from tourism.
Myth. Many countries do not have geriatrics riding around on golden thrones amidst record food bank use while having far more tourism than the UK, and I mean western European nations, not typical global south tourist destinations.
A reminder that the report button is not for ‘waaah I don’t like what you said’.
Cracks knuckles idly
This infographic is produced by a capitalist propaganda network, Visual Capitalist, using data from a capitalist think tank, EIU (Economic Intelligence Unit). I would download the report and scrutinize their methodology but it requires you enter a ton of personal information.
How the fuck made that chart that put USA on top of Brazil, here the president isn’t immune to prison just because he has money
The infographic was produced by a company called Visual Capitalist. Influence of money on the political process doesn’t factor into their calculations. Hell, it probably gives the score a boost.
Rage bait
That’s the least this person deserves for that crime against readability.
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Why do liberals always show their homophobia when their ideology is called into question.
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I like the 1 comma in that whole paragraph…
